French UCT student suffers three stab wounds to neck

A 20-year-old French woman studying at the University of Cape Town is recovering in hospital after she was stabbed and mugged in the historic Bo-Kaap, a popular tourist destination.

The woman was stabbed three times in the neck and her shoulder was injured when her attacker threw her to the ground.

The incident happened at 10am in Chiappini Road, a colourful row of houses that draws hundreds of tourists on a daily basis.

Chiappini street resident Maria Honig told the African News Agency (ANA) that the attack was caught on a neighbour's CCTV camera. She said she called an ambulance while her neighbour applied pressure to the woman's stab wounds.

Honig said the footage was "disturbing".

"It was very quiet, there was nobody on the road, and she was walking towards Wale Street and was met face-to-face with a man, a small scrawny guy. He tried to ask her something. He then pulled a knife or sharp implement and started stabbing her repeatedly in the neck, shoulders and chest. He wasn't trying to distract her briefly to get a backpack, he was trying to some serious damage," Honig said.

The victim, who lives in the Bo-Kaap and has been mugged in the area before, fell to the ground and the mugger made off with her backpack and ran towards Longmarket Street.

She was taken to the Netcare Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital when an ambulance arrived about 45 minutes later.

Honig said the attacker was known to police and had been identified from camera footage, but no arrest had yet been made.

Democratic Alliance (DA) ward councillor Dave Bryant said that the Bo-Kaap had experienced a spike in muggings, but it was the first severe incident involving a stabbing.
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